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She hid the money and gave it to her daughter-in-law. She loved her son more but she knew her daughter-in-law deserved it more!
Trigger warning: This post contains mentions incidents of domestic abuse which may be triggering to survivors.
As she was kneading the dough Her mother in law pulled her hair Don’t make the dough too tight, If it wasn’t for the dowry She muttered under her breath
The sisters-in-law tittered And dough became black Ma where did you get this kali kaluti from Said the sisters-in-law.
She made the dough into small balls, And continued making rotis As she tasted the salted water on her lips
She had won a scholarship in class six She knew all her tables so well But she got married when she was in the eighth class She was kali, not Uma
Kali shorn of all power but with her colour She hid four rotis in the saltbox She was always hungry
Maa had told her never come back Stay in your sasural The thoughts were jumbled in her mind
As she clenched her muscles He looked at her Kali he said And continued It was over Kali he said and spat.
In the hospital room Old and cancer-ridden Her son held her gnarled hand And she saw he had tattooed her name on his arm And she felt the salt on her lips again.
She was sixteen, Round and fat, With laughter that would boom In the whole house.
And then came the partition She was married to a Fifty-year-old, To protect her, her mother said Protect her or to revile her no one knew,
Six kids later When she was forty He died.
She was still round and fat With gusty laughter, She always looked for validation, Lying on her death bed she giggled,
The shopkeeper next door said My eyes are very nasheeli. Are they she asked You are beautiful I told her, Did your husband never tell you that?
She sighed, I don’t remember, I just remember he was old And used to hit me every day He thought I was making eyes at the next-door neighbour.
Were you I asked, Yes that was the only rainbow In my life She died an hour later.
Lali Malik loved her son Her only child No one was like him
If he drank too much It was fine If he misbehaved with his wife It was fine
And then partition happened Lali Malik got 7000 rupees From the government For the haveli she left behind,
She hid the money , And gave it to her daughter-in-law She loved her son more, But she knew her Daughter in law was needier And much more deserving.
Picture credits: Still from TVF’s web series Yeh Meri Family
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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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